Affirmative Hypnosis: Altering your Subconscious

About two weeks ago, my brother and I realized that we had individually drafted out affirmations in a bid to get our success games back on. Without planning it, we each wrote a number of affirmations and recited them daily. We later found out that our dad had done the same thing as well – cool family right? However, because of the innovative geek my brother is, he adopted a new method for his. He made a mix of some of his favourite songs; the easy ones like Kygo instrumentals to put him to sleep at night, and the upbeat ones like Unstoppable by Sia and Warriors by Imagine Dragons for the day. Then, he recorded himself reciting those affirmations and used the mixes as background music. The goal? To play the recitations to himself daily. Even weirder was the fact that he kept on mentioning his name in between the script.

He explained his reasons for doing that:

“When we say ‘ I am’, we’re tricking our subconscious into believing. When we’re asleep, our subconscious is active. In truth, it is always active but when we are asleep it does not have conscious events distracting it so the subconscious is dominant. See, the subconscious doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. This is why when we watch horror movies, our conscious knows it’s a screen but we feel the emotion because our subconscious doesn’t know the difference. Emphasis being that the conscious disturbs. So, adding your name during the affirmation is adding new information to what you already know and are used to. ‘I am Lawretta’ – my mind already believes that, so it’ll believe anything else I say.”

If you already believe in the power of affirmations or speaking to your reality to alter it, then this would be very easy to understand. If you don’t, well, still hang on. We’ve all heard about the power of positive thinking – think and grow rich, as a man thinketh… all of that. Depending on the means with which you reached that decision, you would either call it speaking to God, speaking to the universe, or sending positive energies. It’s generally just a way to control the forces around you to work in your favour. However, the real magic lies within your subconscious mind. What do we mean when we say an individual has a poverty mentality or when another has a success ideology – the subconscious. Without knowing, subconscious beliefs control the way we interact with our day to day world and it has been programed by the media, by teachers, friends, environment and so many more. But, you can rewrite it and work with it to create all the magic you want.

If you want a better life, you must alter your subconscious to think in that direction or it would just never happen. The disposition of our subconscious, in terms of our beliefs and ideologies, needs to change on a subconscious level first before they can change physically. Dr Bruce Lipton, a Biologist and expert on subconscious beliefs explained that we are aware of our conscious beliefs but not the subconscious, so much so that most of us don’t realize when the subconscious mind is at play. Why do you react the way you do in certain situations? Your subconscious has trained you to naturally act that way based on past events or other things it has picked up along the way. The expert also explained that in fact, the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind. We operate 90 to 95% of our lives based on subconscious programs!

“Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you have to heal on a conscious level-citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy – there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

Think about miracles, placebo, wealth, positive energy – they’re all connected! Now, going back to the need for reciting affirmations. In reciting affirmations, we are told to speak in the present. “I am healthy.” “I am wealthy.” This is because your subconscious needs to find those arguments as true and valid. As my brother said, you want to hypnotize you mind into believing that these things are as true as your name. Most people use positive affirmations to shift their attitudes about themselves. A rich person that is stuck in an impoverished place for a while isn’t less rich. He’s just stuck there for a bit, but he is still a rich man and functions like one. If you can trick your subconscious man into believing that, you would have successfully reshaped your subconscious to work in that line.

One key to note, however, is that it must be a deliberate and consistent process. The subconscious doesn’t bend easily. You might have spent the most of your life subconsciously learning something, so you cannot try to change it in one day. This is why affirmations are usually daily exercises. While I don’t think there’s a need to record your voice and play it over and again to yourself (too white people creepy), I do believe we all need to get on board with reciting affirmations to change our world. Just remember that the universe listens when you speak, and it would bend in your favor if you tell it to.

Lawretta Egba is a professional writer, ghostwriter, editor, and poet. She is the founder of Cyno Group, a boutique content creation/content marketing firm meeting the varying content needs of individuals and businesses towards effective storytelling, problem-solving and economic growth. The company offers in-house ghostwriting, editing, and content writing services for large corporations, businesspeople and economic leaders.
Lawretta’s articles have been featured on a plethora of platforms within Nigeria and the diaspora. Some of these include the Premier Pan-African media group reporting on African affairs – Face2Face Africa, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, Exquisite Magazine, YNaija, and a host of others. She runs two blogs: lawrettawrites.com, where she reviews books, writes on mythology, peeks into transformational African topics, and analyzes matters of the human psyche; and newcommas.com, a brainchild created towards documenting everyday African stories.
For info and inquiries, contact via: lawretta@cynogroup.com